Service

ICON

ICON (Icosahedral non-hydrostatic) general circulation model

Scientific area

Solving fully compressible non-hydrostatic equations of motion at very high horizontal resolution.

Short description

The ICON dynamical cores solve the fully compressible non-hydrostatic equations of motion for simulations at very high horizontal resolution. The discretisation of the continuity and tracer transport equations is consistent in a sense that mass of air and its constituents are conserved, which is a fundamental requirement for atmospheric chemistry. Furthermore, the vector invariant form of the momentum equation are used, and thus, vorticity dynamics are emphasised. The new dynamical core solves the system of primitive equations in grid point space on the icosahedral grid, which facilitates the quasi-isotropic horizontal resolution on the sphere and the restriction to regional domains. The discretisation method is defined on a special case of Delaunay triangulation on the sphere, i.e., the icosahedral geodesic grid.
A cloud resolving, or large-eddy simulation (LES) version of the ICON core with ultra-high horizontal grid spacing of approximately 100 m is developed within the BMBF initiative "High definition clouds and precipitation for advancing climate prediction", or HD(CP)2 for short.